Energy efficient opportunistic uplink packet forwarding in hybrid wireless networks

Opportunistic schedulers have been primarily proposed to enhance capacity of cellular networks. However, little is known about opportunistic scheduling with fairness and energy efficiency constraints. In this work, we show that adapting opportunistic scheduling can dramatically ameliorate energy efficiency for uplink transmissions, while achieving near-optimal throughput and high fairness. To achieve this goal, we propose a novel two-tier uplink forwarding scheme in which users cooperate, in particular by forming clusters of dual-radio mobiles in hybrid wireless networks.